


clinging to mist

by walking_through_autumn



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Speculation, mild spoilers for chapter 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 17:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6123847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walking_through_autumn/pseuds/walking_through_autumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasaki meets another person from his past, a man from a lifetime ago whose voice reminds him of moonlit nights and blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	clinging to mist

**Author's Note:**

> Written because of _TGRe_ Chapter 66. Mild spoilers ahead.

“Associate Special Class Sasaki…it’s time.”

For a second he does not react to the quiet words. He has a faint recollection of the scent of blood mingled with the smell of forest wood, a scene of crumbling buildings and a cracked dome, but it is as though he had been seeing it through a fog. For a moment he had been Kaneki Ken, not Sasaki Haise.

With a blink he brings himself back to the present and nods at his subordinate. “Yes. Thank you,” he says, and he walks to his assigned spot.

The wind is bitterly cold, fitting for the day the operation on Rue Island is to begin. He feels its sting on his face and it buffets his hair in every imaginable direction. Through his heavy coat he can barely feel the chill, and he wonders if he is relieved for the fact.

_It is as cold as that winter day had been_ , he finds himself thinking, then wonders which winter day he was thinking about. He feels like it had been a full moon night, much like this night is. A night when sighs came out as mist and long shadows were cast by moonlight filtering through leaves.

He gazes at the buildings surrounding Cochlea, deep in a part of Tokyo no civilian would ever voluntarily visit. The prison with its endless spiral downwards had become as familiar to him as the CCG headquarters are, and the Chateau had been from a lifetime ago. He thinks of _King Bileyg_ , and the smile in Eto’s voice as she told him her wish, earnest like the child she must have once been.

He thinks of the last mission he has given himself and wonders if he will be contented, disappearing with only the vague mist of memories from when he had been Kaneki Ken.

Sighing, he says, “I should hope you are not so foolhardy as to think you can infiltrate Cochlea by yourself.”

The night around him is quiet and heavy with tension. He turns and looks up at the rooftop of a building with its lights switched off and no sign of life within. To the untrained eye there is nothing out of the ordinary, but he had been an investigator long enough that he knows there is something – some _one_ – waiting in the shadows.

He doesn’t bat an eye when a figure silently leaps down from the rooftop, finding sure footing in the ledges of the building. It reveals that his opponent is a ghoul – only a ghoul would be effortlessly capable of making their way down a building safely. _Yukimura_ is ready in his hands, humming like it has a life of its own.

The figure lands and, from a distance, looks at him. Sasaki can make out the silhouette of a large man in a robe.

**_A dark robed man_ ** _, the girl, trembling in fear and with wide eyes, said. **He saved me.**_

He narrows his eyes and says, softly, “Who are you?”

It is unlikely the man hadn’t heard. Sasaki waits for a response, a movement, anything that would tell him who the man is.

He hears what he thinks is a sigh, a long breath let out over the space of two heartbeats. When he senses the man opening his mouth to speak, he braces himself, but is unprepared for the achingly and strangely familiar voice saying, “The question is, who are _you_ …Associate Special Class?”

The voice is deep, and he feels like he had heard it before, from a life he hardly remembers, a voice deep and angry and pleading and strong and so, so vulnerable at one point. It threatens to pierce the fog he is keeping carefully over an abyss of memories.

“Does it matter?” he says. His grip tightens on _Yukimura_. “As an investigator, I have a duty to eliminate you, should you threaten the security of this place.”

There is silence between them then. He studies the man, forcing himself to regain the calm of a general on a battlefield, keeping his mind blank but for the sole objective of keeping Cochlea secure. A single step, a single word would break the stalemate. He waits for the man to make the next move.

“You’re alive,” the man says. He huffs, a humourless sound that disappears as soon as it begins. “But you’ve changed so much I nearly cannot recognise you.”

Sasaki knows then, clear as the sharp wind that bites at his skin, that this is a man from his past. Like the girl with sorrowful eyes in the café, Hinami whom he once smiled at, the Tsukiyama heir he dropped from the top of an impossibly tall building.

“Tell me who you are,” Sasaki says, all pretence at playing a polite investigator forgotten.

The man raises his hand and Sasaki’s muscles scream at him to move into a battle stance, before he realises the man is pulling his hood down and in the next moment he is staring into a pair of mismatched eyes. Eyes that are a direct mirror to his own, deep black and red next to white and dark brown, eyes that have seen a world of nightmares not unlike his own world.

The fog over his memories is dissipating, like the sun has risen and the fog can no longer hold its shape. He clings onto it, trembling, as his lips form shapes around a name he thought had been wiped from the world forever, to live on only in records of brave fallen investigators and the sorrowful light in Akira’s eyes.

“It has been a long time, Eyepatch…Kaneki Ken,” the man says, his smile small and sad and impossibly warm.

“Amon,” he says, the sound escaping him in barely more than a whisper, as the fog over his memories fade and begin to come into sharp relief. “ _Amon_ ,” he says again, and this time he wonders if this is the way the real him sounds, broken and raw and like the world is falling apart and knitting together all at once.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated :)


End file.
